The government’s visa refund scheme to entice working holidaymakers back to Australia ended this week, with little more than 7,000 backpackers having taken advantage of the offer.
That modest return is one indicator of a profound change in the fabric of Australia’s agriculture industry, as backpackers are replaced by migrant workers thanks to pandemic restrictions and a wider shake-up in the visa system.
The changes threaten to fuel exploitation and create a sub-class of workers on Australian farms, advocates have warned, as the workforce fills with Pacific Islanders and migrants from south-east Asia.
Since the borders reopened, 18,500 people with working holiday visas have arrived in Australia, according to the latest figures from the Department of Home Affairs, and 7,009 have applied for visa fee refunds (a further 33,371 on student visas have also applied).
President of the Victorian Farmers Federation, Emma Germano, says backpackers are returning in a “trickle” to work in agricultural industries, but not in anything like the numbers seen before the pandemic closed international borders.
Figures from the National Farmers Federation suggest only 7,000 backpackers had returned to work in agriculture by February, compared with a pre-pandemic workforce of about 40,000.
Workplace relations and legal affairs manager at the federation, Ben Rogers, says the impact of the visa refund has been marginal, given the time frame, and won’t help to help fill shortages unless it is extended until the end of the year.
And growers are worried that even as backpacker numbers increase, many of them will choose jobs in other industries.
That is now much easier thanks to changes to the working holiday visa designed to help other industries with labour shortages, and changes to the rules for UK travellers under the free trade agreement with Australia.
British backpackers, who have typically made up about 25% of the horticultural workforce, are no longer required to work in regional Australia for 88 days to be able to renew their visas.
Backpackers from other countries still have to complete the 88 days requirement, but in July 2021 the government expanded the eligible categories of work, allowing them to also work in the tourism and hospitality sectors in northern Australia, to fill gaps in the labour market.
Previously they could only work in farming, fishing, mining and construction, or on bushfire recovery projects.
Abul Rizvi, an immigration adviser says backpackers will avoid farm work if they have other options.
“If you’ve got the option of waiting at a table instead of picking fruit you’re going to choose that, because picking fruit is really hard,” Rizvi says.
Few hands for hard work
The farmers federation estimates that the horticulture industry is currently short of 10,000 workers.
To make up the gap, the government has been supercharging the new Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (Palm) scheme – with 22,400 workers from Pacific islands now in Australia, up from 14,760 in 2021 and 9,222 in 2020.
And the Pacific islanders may soon be joined by another new cohort after the government created a special agriculture visa to lure workers from south-east Asia.
On 28 March Vietnam became the first country to sign on to the visa, which was first rolled out in October.
Rizvi believes “the competition for agriculture jobs over the next 12 months will become intense” between the two groups.
Proponents of both programs, including growers’ groups, argue they bring benefits for both Australian farms and the workers.
The farmers’ federation used almost religious language to welcome the introduction of the “coveted” agricultural visa, saying its “calls have been answered” after an unrelenting campaign.
“There will be a sigh of relief from farmers from the very northern tip of our country to those in the most southerly parts of Tasmania,” its president, Fiona Simson, said.
She said the Pacific program, although less flexible for farmers, was also “very positive” and would strengthen ties with neighbouring countries.
But workers’ advocates say the groups replacing backpackers are even more vulnerable to exploitation through low pay, restrictive terms of employment and poor conditions.
The Palm program has already been plagued with stories of exploitation. The human rights law firm Levitt Robinson says many workers are losing two-thirds of their pay because of unfair deductions from the labour-hire companies they are attached to.
And the chief executive of the Migrant Workers Centre, Matt Kunkel, says the south-east Asian visa fails to protect the rights of those taking it up.
“What we’ve seen, in the rush to implement the new visa, all of the good aspects that made it worthwhile are being ignored or left out or are underdeveloped,” says Kunkel.
“People would still be quite closely bound to their employer, providing incredible control on where they live and where they can work.
“There just won’t be enough support wrapped around this new cohort of migrants. They won’t have an induction about their rights, accommodation, protection – all of these things should be in a new visa class, but they’re not.”
One worker in his mid-30s Guardian Australia spoke with was recently working on a farm in Victoria under the Palm scheme. He said he and 60 other seasonal workers were told they would be paid $25.41 an hour, but when they arrived they were put on piece rates.
On the first day, the farmers offered $7 for a tray of strawberries, but that went down to $4.20 the next day and $3 the day after. The workers were only able to make $300 for working up to 73 hours in a week, he says.
“Also the conditions, we shared one kitchen with three stoves and three fridges and there’s over 60 of us,” he says.
“We’re being dragged over here to do this job. And we’re being treated so appallingly. The question is why?.
“Australian people are not able to do this work. But then we come and we’re happy to do the work, but we’re not treated very well.”
Piece rates will no longer be allowed from 28 April after the Fair Work Commission ruled fruit pickers must be paid a minimum wage, while Levitt Robinson is currently building a class action over the Palm program.
Solicitor Dana Levitt says workers often failed to make enough money to send home thanks to unfair deductions.
“This, combined with the government’s failure to adequately regulate the program has resulted in widespread and systemic underpayment of workers, above-market deductions from wages for ‘living expenses’, substandard living and working conditions to name just a few,” Levitt says.
Rizvi says the switch from backpackers to other groups of workers will leave the agriculture workforce open to “much higher levels of exploitation” as long as underlying issues of pay and conditions are not addressed.
“Exploitation will rise to levels that we have seen for decades in North America and Europe,” he says.
